Captain Cook memorial removed from Melbourne park after repeated vandalism around Australia Day

“But [I] don’t think if we put it back up, it would be just damaged one more time. It would be ongoing, ongoing and ongoing. And how can we justify that?”

Jolly encouraged the Yarra chief executive to consider an offer from the Captain Cook Society’s Bill Lang for that group to take possession of the monument’s plaques and seek another location for their display.

Lang said the Captain Cook Society were having informal discussions with other local governments and museums to find a home for the monument, and would “act as custodians of it in the short term”.

“Rather than it sitting in some council shed somewhere … it should be preserved, and an appropriate place found for it,” Lang said.

He believed helping facilitate the monument’s removal from Edinburgh Gardens was a pragmatic step and did not amount to giving in to the pressure of vandals.

“I don’t think it’s for a council to necessarily pursue things like the memorial, if they can’t afford to do it, given other pressing issues citizens have got in the City of Yarra,” Lang said.

He urged police to enforce the law and protect against similar vandalism of Captain Cook monuments.

“It’s incredibly disappointing that there are people that can’t put themselves in the shoes of people of their time,” he said. “We would all do much better to understand our history and to learn from it.”